Gulf Oil Slick

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa

Engineer Ken Price has just reported that he is moving his family away from the Gulf. He quotes at henry makow.com that "There are cracks in the sea floor leaking, and the pressure tests are revealing that the casing is not holding. It has already been perforated in numerous places. We also have a methane reading of 30%. If this continues the sea bed can swell than comtract and cause a major tsuami."

ok.............Aj.........where are you.........

I have been without technology (most on purpose) since Friday morning.........

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by Toughy

ok.............Aj.........where are you.........

I have been without technology (most on purpose) since Friday morning.........

Supposedly some engineer who worked for an oil company (what company? what kind of engineer? etc.) wrote an email to a web site (the subtitle or the web site is "Exposing feminism and the New World Order"). Of all the web sites in all the world, why would this engineer - if he exists - send this information to a fringy wingnut? The story was republished on another equally fringy freak site. If you google this supposed engineer you get three hits - the two tin foil hat sites, and, thanks to shoddy fact checking, us. What lovely company we now get to keep.

I'm no expert, but I imagine that a methane gas leak might be something akin to a submarine volcano. These volcanoes are quite common and rarely cause tsunami activity. There's one that's been active for decades in Lesser Antilles (named Kick 'em Jenny); the worst thing it's caused from what I've read so far is a 2M wave that took out a road. There's huge scientific debate right now about a possible tsunami in Italy from a submarine volcano, but that one involves a massive collapse of the ocean floor. That sort of activity is more in keeping with ocean floor movement that accompanies earthquakes - activity that does cause tsunamis.

Does that help?

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Supposedly some engineer who worked for an oil company (what company? what kind of engineer? etc.) wrote an email to a web site (the subtitle or the web site is "Exposing feminism and the New World Order"). Of all the web sites in all the world, why would this engineer - if he exists - send this information to a fringy wingnut? The story was republished on another equally fringy freak site. If you google this supposed engineer you get three hits - the two tin foil hat sites, and, thanks to shoddy fact checking, us. What lovely company we now get to keep.

I'm no expert, but I imagine that a methane gas leak might be something akin to a submarine volcano. These volcanoes are quite common and rarely cause tsunami activity. There's one that's been active for decades in Lesser Antilles (named Kick 'em Jenny); the worst thing it's caused from what I've read so far is a 2M wave that took out a road. There's huge scientific debate right now about a possible tsunami in Italy from a submarine volcano, but that one involves a massive collapse of the ocean floor. That sort of activity is more in keeping with ocean floor movement that accompanies earthquakes - activity that does cause tsunamis.

Does that help?

yes ma'am it certainly does help...........

[Diavolo]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Supposedly some engineer who worked for an oil company (what company? what kind of engineer? etc.) wrote an email to a web site (the subtitle or the web site is "Exposing feminism and the New World Order"). Of all the web sites in all the world, why would this engineer - if he exists - send this information to a fringy wingnut? The story was republished on another equally fringy freak site. If you google this supposed engineer you get three hits - the two tin foil hat sites, and, thanks to shoddy fact checking, us. What lovely company we now get to keep.

I'm no expert, but I imagine that a methane gas leak might be something akin to a submarine volcano. These volcanoes are quite common and rarely cause tsunami activity. There's one that's been active for decades in Lesser Antilles (named Kick 'em Jenny); the worst thing it's caused from what I've read so far is a 2M wave that took out a road. There's huge scientific debate right now about a possible tsunami in Italy from a submarine volcano, but that one involves a massive collapse of the ocean floor. That sort of activity is more in keeping with ocean floor movement that accompanies earthquakes - activity that does cause tsunamis.

Does that help?

Immensely.

Everyone should do their homework before posting anything anywhere. That's how knuckleheads get traction.

[JustJo]

So evidently the surface oil is clearing much more quickly than anyone expected and, while we naturally should have concerns about long-term impacts, this whole situation is looking more hopeful...

Of interest to me in this article...evidently the Gulf has thousands of natural oil seeps and, as a result, also has bacteria present that "eat" oil.

Interesting read from the NY Times right here.

[AtLast]

Argh.... so, you think safety regulations are honored by oil companies in the Gulf?

Wed Jul 28, 1:50 pm ET
NEW ORLEANS – Oil, natural gas and water are still spewing from an abandoned well hit by a barge on a Louisiana waterway near the Gulf of Mexico.

Crews work to cap new La. oil leak near Gulf

Coast Guard Capt. John Arenstam says a wild well company is working on a plan to shut down the well, which is north of Barataria Bay and has been leaking since early Tuesday.

Authorities had already been working there to avoid contamination from the much larger BP oil spill in the Gulf. Arenstam expects the company to present its shutdown plan at some point Wednesday.

It's not clear how much oil has spewed from the damaged wellhead but local officials say it's a minuscule amount compared to the BP spill.

The Coast Guard says a towboat was pushing the barge on Mud Lake when it hit the wellhead. The towboat captain told investigators the well was not lit as required.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100728/ap_on_re_us/us_oil_well_accident

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

I'm no expert, but I imagine that a methane gas leak might be something akin to a submarine volcano. These volcanoes are quite common and rarely cause tsunami activity. There's one that's been active for decades in Lesser Antilles (named Kick 'em Jenny); the worst thing it's caused from what I've read so far is a 2M wave that took out a road. There's huge scientific debate right now about a possible tsunami in Italy from a submarine volcano, but that one involves a massive collapse of the ocean floor. That sort of activity is more in keeping with ocean floor movement that accompanies earthquakes - activity that does cause tsunamis.

Does that help?

Methane escapes to the atmosphere all the time. The thing is is that the actual science behind the hysteria is really quite interesting. I apologize for the derail but this is really cool stuff and, I think, provides a useful counterpoint to the "oh my god we're all gonna die!" stuff.

There have been 5 major mass extinctions in the history of life on this planet and we are in the middle of the sixth. They are (from most recent to least):

1. Holocene event 12,000 - present. Most likely cause: Us
2. K-T extinction 65 mya. Most likely cause: Meteor strike
3. Triassic-Jurassic extinction 205 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown. Possible meteor strike
4. End Permian event 251 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown.
5. Late Devonian 360 - 375 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown
6. End Ordovician 440 - 450 mya. Most likely cause: Unknown

So the three oldest extinctions we don't know why. The one everyone wants to figure out is the End Permian because that was huge. By way of comparison the K-T extinction (the one everyone knows because it took out the dinosaurs) took down 17% of all families, 50% of all genera, and 75% of all species. The End Permian extinction took out 57% of families, 83% of all genera, 96%! of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species. An event that big--and that is as close to life has come to being wiped out since bacteria got things booted up--begs an explanation. The interesting hypothesis which seems to have the *best* data to support it is that there was a huge sudden release of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas and there is a 6 degree C rise in temp at the right place in the geological record.

That's the background behind this whole methane bubble hysteria. The thing is, the methane compounds that may have caused the Permian event are not present in the Gulf of Mexico in any significant amounts and they are *not* the form of methane compounds being detected in elevated levels.

Look, both the Universe and the Earth would be perfectly happy to see us all go. Hell, the Universe positively *wants* to kill us--big rocks, gamma-ray bursts, galactic collisions, the Sun expanding and that's just the ways I can think of off the top of my head. It is endless in its creativity of ways to shuffle our species off this mortal coil. The Earth isn't that much more benign toward our presence. But this man-made catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico isn't a threat to the species. It's a threat to a way of life and it *should be* (but won't be) a threat to BPs continued existence but it isn't an extinction level event by any stretch nor will it precipitate one.

Cheers
Aj